South Australia election: More uncounted votes than earlier thought

Amid uncertainty about the outcome of the South Australian election, the Electoral Commission has revised the number of uncounted votes upward.

The estimate of 260,000 uncounted ballot papers now stands at 320,000, with more absentee votes than thought.

There are about 3,000 from overseas or interstate.

Politics analyst Clem Macintyre says news there are an extra 80,000 votes to be counted could have a significant impact on predictions about the outcome.

Professor Macintyre of Adelaide University says it might have a big effect in some seats.

"That's nearly a third of the vote in some seats. While we can be reasonably confident we've got a sense of how the vote is going and probably begin to get a feel for how those pre-polls will break for the parties, a third of the vote still gives either party chance to really turn election results around in seat-by-seat," he said.

Commission staff were busy opening envelopes during the morning and will count votes throughout the afternoon.

Electoral Commissioner Kay Mousley says she will recommend pre-poll ballots be treated as ordinary votes in future to help speed counting.

She says about 79,000 pre-poll votes were cast ahead of Saturday's election.

Treating pre-polls as ordinary votes could help, she says.

"It's in a controlled environment where you have got our staff that are trained to manage this, so that is something that would definitely speed-up the process," she said.

"But having said that we still have all of the absent votes that were cast on election day; they are still in declaration envelopes as are the postals that are being returned to us through the mail."

One of the key independent MPs Geoff Brock has met the CEOs and mayors of the five council areas in his Frome electorate of South Australia's mid-north.

He is considering what to ask of Labor or the Liberals if they need his support to govern.

The two independents, the other being Bob Such in the seat of Fisher, met Liberal leader Steven Marshall separately on Monday and Labor's Jay Weatherill jointly last Sunday to discuss possibilities if South Australia ends up with a hung parliament.